“You may tell him,” said Mrs. Ascher, “that his invention is capable of being used for the ends of art; that he has created a mechanical body and that we, the artists, must breathe into it the breath of life.”
We reached the house.
“I am coming in, if I may,” I said. “Mr. Ascher asked me to see him to-night if possible. I promised to wait for him even if he does not get home till very late.”
“I shall not sit up with you,” said Mrs. Ascher. “I want to be alone to think. I want to discover the way in which art is to take possession of mechanics, how it is to inspire all new discoveries, to raise them from the level of material things up and up to the mountain tops of beautiful emotion.”
“I shall tell Tim that,” I said. “He’ll be awfully pleased.”
Mrs. Ascher held my hand, bidding me an impressive good-night.
“There is a spirit,” she said, “which moves among the multitudinous blind gropings of humanity. It moves all unseen and unknown by men, guiding their pitiful endeavours to the Great End. That End is Duty. That spirit is Art. To recognise it is Faith.”
The Irish bishop who attended my party is a liberal and highly educated churchman. He once told me about a Spirit which moves very much as Mrs. Ascher’s does. Its aim was goodness and the bishop called it God. His definition of faith was, except for the different object, precisely Mrs. Ascher’s.
Gorman propounds a somewhat similar philosophy of life, and occasionally talks about faith in the same rapt way. I do not suppose that he actually holds the faith he preaches, certainly not as Mrs. Ascher and the bishop hold theirs. No Irishman is, or ever can be, a Liberal after the English fashion; but Gorman does talk about the spirit of democracy and says he looks forward to its guiding Humanity to a great end, universal peace.
I made my way into Ascher’s study, wondering how long I should have to wait for him.